


Stage and Sonnet, Fall 1609: Featured Review

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Something Rotten! - Kirkpatrick/Kirkpatrick/O'Farrell
Genre: Embedded Images, Gen, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: The review staff at a respected 17th century arts publication offer their commentary on the Bottom Brothers' latest creative endeavors from across the Atlantic.





	Stage and Sonnet, Fall 1609: Featured Review

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnapologeticallyMeatwad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnapologeticallyMeatwad/gifts).

* * *

Many people only vaguely recall the avant-garde undertakings of the Brothers Bottom. This is in part because their most infamous and emblematic work was performed but once before their subsequent exile from England; it is also in part because the Office of the Censor has not looked kindly upon publications calling it to public remembrance. The editors here at _Stage and Sonnet_ have no desire to comment upon the politics of that historic trial (and we wish to state our complete and hearty appreciation for all the fine work that the Office of the Censor does). However, we think that with a new decade and a new century well underway, it might be time to re-examine these much maligned gentlemen of the theatre and their bold, shocking, and perhaps even occasionally tolerable oeuvre. The 90s are over, and we now live in an era of roaring girls and burning pestles, where perhaps a little plagiary via witchcraft is just the sort of thing to add spice to the theatre.  
  
It is with this in mind that we are reviewing the Bottom Brothers' latest performance piece from out of the Americas, which is entitled _Appleton_. Building upon the surrealist, food-themed beats of their previous work, it tells a completely fantastical tale of a treasonous America attempting to sever itself from the gentle guidance and authority of its parent-state. Far from being un-ironically seditious, however, play shows the vanity of such rebellions in all their frank absurdity, foregrounding as its viewpoint character a rhyming mutant quince named Salamander Appleton. Appleton, who survives a hurricane and falls from a tree in an abandoned orchard prior to the play's beginning, takes the bizarre conceit the Bottom Brothers introduced in their first "musical" to a new extreme. Not only does Appleton sing through significant portions of his dialogue, he additionally attempts to "battle" other singing performers through musical duels that collapse the artistry of song back into spoken word... but with more rhyming and fewer iambs than one typically sees on stage. In much the same way Donne presently breaks with poetic form or that Holbein once broke with the way that skulls are actually supposed to look, the Bottoms once again break with all conventions of theatrical aesthetics. In this post-Beaumont age, it's refreshing to see artists continue to push at the envelope.  
  
The play, however, becomes weaker once one delves into the actual plot. This story of American treachery hits a number of outlandish and entirely incoherent twists that somehow involve a comet, a descent into the hell of pagan Greece, and a talking (or rather singing) sponge and his underwater friends. We continue to contend that the true strength of a Bottom production is its willingness to break new ground and experiment with new ideas--as one ought demand from a new era and a new world. The Bottoms' weakness, however, remains their inability to have their disparate new ideas make any passing sense when strung together. They also seem to have a marked difficulty in getting together anybody to perform them with more gravitas and professionalism than one might expect from a country miracle play full of rude mechanicals. While the authors of this review were not able to travel to the savage wilds of Virginia to witness the opening performance of _Appleton_ (as the several month long sea voyage and impending threat of smallpox rendered this infeasible), our correspondents confirm that it was of much the same calibre as _Omelette's_ opening night, save without any sudden interruption by William Shakespeare demanding that he not be robbed of his rightful creative property.  
  
This brings us, perhaps, to one of the most important questions about the play, which is "Was it stolen from anyone else using the prognostications of some doubtlessly damned and infernal magician?" Shakespeare, who declined our interview but had his agent send us a statement, indicates that he suspects this to be the case. He apparently has been working on a piece set in the new world himself, and it involves storms and ocean-themed song sequences that he claims Nick Bottom has clearly lifted from his future brain to put in his new show. While we are still awaiting the Bottoms' reply (owing again to that several month long sea voyage), these reviewers would like to point out that Nick and Nigel possibly have some reason to set productions in the Americas, as they now live in them. Shakespeare, however, will probably have to speak to his lawyers and consider buying up some fresh vellum if the plot of his upcoming _The Hurricane_ was, in fact, going to feature a tap-dancing squid man.  
  
As for the accusations of witchcraft, which must be of immediate concern for the Bottoms in their current witch-unfriendly surroundings, we do have it on good authority that one Thomas Nostradamus is reportedly credited in some playbills as a "creative consultant." This, however, is not conclusive proof of any unauthorised soothsaying transpiring. Our correspondents indicate that Thomas has apparently been tested for witchcraft by a local witchsmeller, and his results have come up inconclusive. Apparently, the pond into which he was thrown to determine if water would reject his impure body was a rather shallow one, unable to accommodate a man of Mr. Nostrodamus' size.  
  
As we at _Stage and Sonnet_ are not knowledgeable at all about the dark arts of divination (the Office of the Censor can attest that we have been very consistent on this point!), we cannot comment as to the reality or spiritual ramifications of these suspicions regarding the Bottoms' work. We can, however, say that witchcraft on an aesthetic level has always been a great boon to the theatre since even before Marlowe's time and that the whiff of sulphur has always clung indelibly about the Bottoms. Although we cannot recommend _Appleton_ to any of our readers (as you are all, presumably within the safe confines of our sceptred isle and not within the magazineless forests of the heathen new world), we think that it is nevertheless a fitting continuation of the Bottoms' work, whatever that might be worth.--**STAFF**

**Author's Note:**

> **Image Credits:** Photo of Henry Wriothesley miniature by [Haiduc](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Miniature_of_Henry_Wriothesley,_3rd_Earl_of_Southampton,_1594._\(Fitzwilliam_Museum\).jpg); promotional photo recklessly stolen from the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/theater/review-something-rotten-an-over-the-top-take-on-shakespeare.html)
> 
> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.
> 
> * * *
> 
> References made to Christopher Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, Francis Beaumont's _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's _The Roaring Girl_, and a number of Broadway musicals that won acclaim after _Something Rotten!_ and its soothsayer first hit the stage (_Hamilton_, _Dear Evan Hansen_, _SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical_, and _Hadestown_).


End file.
